Active until the end, Philip Mullins spent the final 15 years of his life in Cornwall where he volunteered for Coastwatch, an organisation that monitors sea traffic around the UK coast. He spent his time walking in the countryside with his dog, tending the garden and enjoying the company of his family.
Mullins was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1928, his son Justin told Optician. He was educated at St Bede’s College which instilled his lifelong love of rugby. He was steeped in the ways of journalism from an early age as his father was sports editor at the Press, a regional paper in New Zealand’s South Island.
‘Dad moved to England in 1948, working his passage here by ship via the Panama Canal. His destination was St Hugh’s Charterhouse Parkminster in West Sussex. This is a Carthusian monastery where he was ordained as a monk and lived an ascetic life of prayer and silence for 17 years,’ wrote Justin.
But the monastic life came to an end when Mullins left in 1965 and began a career in journalism. At that time, he met his wife, Ursula, with whom he had four children.
It was eight years later, in September 1973, that Mullins started work on Optician as deputy to Eric Crundall. He took over as editor on Crundall’s retirement in 1976. The journal had been going through a lean period and Mullins is credited with putting it back on course and transforming its fortunes. He soon became a well-known optical industry figure helped by an eagerness to learn and a disarming charm. During his tenure he became a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers and a freeman of the City of London.
Fellow former editor Alison Ewbank, who worked with Mullins from 1985 until his retirement, remembers him as, by any estimation, one of a kind. ‘Philip’s unconventional character and personal history meant that life on Optician was never dull,’ she wrote.
‘It’s a poor man who can’t do a week’s work in half a day,’ was his favoured maxim, and one that left him plenty of time for his many interests outside the world of optics. These included the music of John Taverner and the (now controversial) art of Eric Gill among them. ‘Although talk in the office was just as likely to turn to the fortunes of the All Blacks or the latest news of his family,’ wrote Ewbank.
Philip filled the first spread of each Optician with ‘Editor’s Round’, featuring comments on the issues of the day alongside accounts of the week’s social events, at a time when wining and dining over long lunches with industry was an intrinsic part of the job.
He enjoyed travel and was occasionally to be found escaping to the Italian lakes on a work trip to Milan rather than pacing the aisles at Mido, although he never failed to come back with a story. As a colleague, Philip was charming, always encouraging, and welcomed new ideas. As an editor, he was a staunch defender of the journal, which he considered to be ‘the one’ in optical publishing.
‘He presided over one of the most successful periods in Optician’s history that also saw a move out of central London to Sutton, the transition from mono to four-colour printing throughout, and the introduction of ‘new technology’ to the production process.
‘Philip continued the tradition of the long-serving Optician editor, as only the fifth incumbent when the journal reached its 100th anniversary in 1991. It was at a dinner to mark Optician’s centenary that he showed his complete grasp of the industry at that time, introducing each of the many guests in turn and delivering a gracious personal tribute to each.’
Mullins moved on to run the Blackfriars Club for the Blind for a few years and also took a great interest in the Globe Theatre where he worked as a volunteer during the time when Mark Rylance was its artistic director. ‘He loved that theatre and knew many of the plays he saw there almost verbatim,’ wrote Justin.
After moving to Cornwall in 2003, Mullins joined Coastwatch, his experience working his passage to England, fired his enthusiasm and added an extra insight to this role. He always loved the sea and was happy to spend long hours monitoring the Cornish coastal traffic and checking that all was well.
He is survived by his wife Ursula, his four children and 11 grandchildren.